So, I live in Tokyo and I usually take the train everywhere. I also tend to walk a lot, but not usually farther than the closest station. I decided to get a bike for exercise, with the idea that anything within 10 Minutes by normal train is often doable by bike in less than an hour. However, sort of riding below the train tracks The whole way, I find out just how much I don't know the local roads and have no idea where I am. Also, filtering the train track is often a very inefficient way to go when biking. I tried using the navi on my phone by holding it in one hand while I ride, but that does truly seem dangerous - or at least inconvenient. I also tried the approach of keeping it in my pocket and stopping every once in a while, but that's also terribly inefficient and inconvenient. Then I found this navi/phone holder that has a clear pocket for your phone and straps onto the handlebars. Not only does it work, it works pretty damn well. I punch in my destination before leaving, and glance down at the display for like a millisecond every once in a while. Usually when it's quieter (like at night), I can avoid looking at it altogether by following the voice prompts. I've never come close to any kind of accident or felt that this is dangerous in any way. I'm missing what the big deal is, I suppose. A car navigation system isn't really much different. If you glance at it every once in a while to make sure you're still on track you would be perfectly safe. If you are trying to fiddle with it without stopping, you're asking for trouble.

You mean like my docomo Sony XPERIA z? The microphone is somehow waterproof. It doors have ports for headphone, usb, and sim card, but they are recessed and usually covered by flaps that blend into the body design. It's obvious that they are four emergency use. The built in speaker and microphone work just fine for phone calls and are somehow waterproof, but I use a Bluetooth headset for listening to music.

Look, I'm as much of a tech nerd as anyone else, but the summary is written by someone who just doesn't "get it". Whether this product is successful will have almost nothing directly to do with the type of screen, amount of ram, or mHz of the processor. Users Care about what they can do with the watch and how it will improve their lives. Apple doesn't usually push the tech specs of their phone because nobody cares. People Care about the speed of losing their web page, the user friendliness on the email application, the quality of Photos taken with the camera, etc. The amount of ram is just an implementation detail. In fact, this is all doubly true in the case of specialized devices like this because: 1. They can tune the os and software to adjust the specs needed for decent performance. 2. They don't have to deal with running all sorts of legacy 3rd party apps. Now, what can this watch actually do? It can make calls, great, that means it's a fancy Bluetooth headset. It can take Photos? Ok, but so can the phone itself - what else?

"some economists..."? Yeah, like 1% in the quack fringe. Increasing productivity is a good thing. I don't expect Mr. Union car maker guy who thinks he deserves $50 an hour for a semi-skilled welding job to understand that, but the audience of Slashdot should. Increasing the efficiency with which we can work means we can do more, and society progresses. Do you want to spend your like digging ditches? Doing The laundry by hand? Doing accounting without computers? Come on. Automation is sometimes bad in the sorry ten for those automated out of a job, but it's good for everyone else. And people don't necessarily lose their jobs, often they get to do something more interesting. For example, I knew one guy who used to work at a plant that made cardboard boxes. Now he writes assembly code for DSP chips. I also met someone recently at my current job who was transferred into the IT division at his company after they automated the hard disk drive factory he worked at. And for that matter, I'm supposed to be giving business process advice to people, but Half the time I get sidetracked into helping people load files into a finicky database or something like that. If that work that should be easily automated disappeared tomorrow, we would all be happy. There will always be plenty of work to do, it just won't always be the exact same work. But hey, what do I know, I only have a degree in finance. New kinds of jobs open up all the time.

That's missing the point. A lot of Japanese companies have manufacturing in China too, but the products manufactured to sell in Japan have much much higher quality than those manufactured to sell in China. Simply because Japanese people won't think twice about paying twice as much for something 50% better, whereas the average Chinese person would think that's crazy.

hahaha I'm sorry, but ZTE is just shit. They area big joke here in Japan. Huawei, sure, Acer? Maybe someday, ZTE - not any time soon.

What's the big deal? They collected random Wi-Fi data. Obviously the data they collected was from open Wi-Fi access points. If you leave an access point open, that's an invitation to connect. If that I'd illegal, then the law is unrealistic and needs to be modified. Further, the traffic they collected was little bits of random stuff from lots of different places. Maybe they got 100 packets from your router - and then? What? Nothing, that's what. Your packets should be encrypted by ssl or similar if you don't want people to be reading them anyway. Even if you use wap on your Wi-Fi, the unencrypted traffic goes across the internet anyway! Jeez

Well first of all, it's not just men, but people in general. People who put in long hours all week tend to have one of Two reactions. one, they want to go out and have crazy fun on the weekend's. Two, they just want to sleep and be left alone to watch tv, web browser, watch tv and whatever. They have to deal with people all week, so they want some down time. most of people get that every day, but Japan has a lot of people working 12 hours a day with 2-4 hours of train time. Add in time to get ready in the morning and time to eat and take a shower, it doesn't leave a lot of time for hobbies. when someone asks you of you want to go drinking Friday night or whatever, past of you thinks "hell yeah!", while part of you thinks "meh, maybe I'll just go home and catch up on some sleep." Add to that the fact that salary is still largely related to age at a lot of places, and you end up with cheap asses who want to stay at their parent's house and avoid going out to save money.

A lot of Japanese phones will disable all functionality if they don't connect to the proper network with a valid SIM. If you don't pay you Bill, it turns into a paperweight. If you leave the country for too long, it turns into a paperweight. If you report it stolen, they block it from the network and it turns into a paperweight immediately. If you remove the Sim card, guess what happens? Yeah, it turns into a paperweight. This includes Softbank android phones made by SHARP. They are nice phones, but I can't even get to the address Book in my old one.... And no, they basically can't be hacked. It's not like people haven't tried. Now, there are good things and bad things about this system. The good thing is that anyone who steals your phone basically only ends up with a high tech paperweight. The bad thing is that you have even less control over your own phone and your phone will basically self destruct if hacked.